Articles by ‘Kendra Gaines’

If you’re in the business of web design, chances are you’ve come across a client that needs a website for their business. You’ll get clients from all walks of life but some clients can just be straight up boring. Many designers aren’t jumping up and down to work with the construction companies, lawyers or medical supply shops. We like to work with the fun stuff like bakeries, creative agencies and clothing stores.

The reason is because most traditionally bland businesses enjoy the traditional and bland website. You end up making something lots of blues, lots of boxes and tons of text. So what happens when you don’t want to say no to a client that fits this profile but you also don’t want to say no to creativity? Well, you meet in the middle.

And that’s exactly what we’re doing today. We’ve gathered more than 20 WordPress themes that add some flavor to the typical business website and can be used no matter the industry. Let’s jump on in.

Divi

Aside from this theme being amazingly customizable, Divi is just an all around beautiful theme. Sure it’s pretty simple but there’s beauty in the details such as the reveal of images, the headers and so much more. This is definitely great for the client that wants to live a little but doesn’t want to stray to far away.

It’s the beginning of a brand new year. This signifies for many a time to change habits and behaviors and attempt to be a better person. It’s a time where people like to re-evaluate their lifestyles and try to remove the gunk. It’s a time where people become motivated to be better at whatever they do.

As designers, we are no different. Some of us want to start a business or dive deep into the life of full-time freelancing. Some of us want to seek recognition for our work and some of us just want to learn a new skill. Whatever it may be, we are all motivated and trying to figure out ways to go from good to great.

Being a great designer requires some creative thinking. There’s a lot of talented individuals out there, but that’s not the only thing that makes one designer better than the other. Greatness is something that begins with the mind and is cultivated through practice. To get you started on your new you this new year, here are a few steps you should try in order to reach greatness this year.

Graphic and web design are areas that thrive off the creation and manipulation of trends. If you’ve ever closely studied either area, you know there are many basic rules of thumb. From these basics spread many of today’s newest trends. The gift and curse of trends are they’re never a secret. Like any popular thing, once it catches on, it spreads and grows like wildfire.

With web design, we tend to find a new implementation of something ‘cool’ every month or so. Scrolling effects went from entire parallax scrolling sites to small parallax slides. Viewing sites on phones went from a separate mobile theme to responsive web design to “why don’t you just make an app?” in a matter of months.

In a few days, lots of people will sit at their desks and gather their thoughts. They’ll scroll through a bunch of website showcases and sift through Dribbble to find some things they like. They will bookmark some things, scribble down some notes and dump it all into a WordPress blog. Before they hit the publish button, they’ll proofread it and submit a guide to the world of the trendiest trends for web design in 2014.

Pay them no attention. If you want to stand out, then you have to stand out. No matter the purpose of a website, there’s room to do things differently. You don’t believe it? Let’s take a look

The Garden Edit

It starts off looking like a regular website; maybe a photography portfolio of some sort. But as you scroll down, you actually find out that it’s an eCommerce website where they’re selling products for your garden. Even the product pages have a different layout. They’re probably trying to show you their products are different than everyone else’s.